🔗 Share this article

By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of 12 months. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly ignored by the established outlets for indie music in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely covered their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for most alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can identify numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way completely unlike anything else in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bass player Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the usual alternative group set texts, which was completely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and funk”.

The smoothness of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s Mani who propels the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing funk, his octave-leaping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the sauce wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy guitar work, or even the breakbeat borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently funky. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights usually occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him figuratively urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a catastrophic headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His popping, mesmerising bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Consistently an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the inscription “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of extremely profitable gigs – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever magic had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Maybe he felt he’d done enough: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly observed their confident attitude, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a aim to transcend the standard market limitations of indie rock and reach a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their most obvious immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: following their early success, you abruptly encountered many indie bands who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”